Survey says ...

It's been really quiet lately. The blogs are fairly quiet, too. Few people are posting at the moment. It's mid-January, and that mid-winter funk seems to have snuck up on everyone. I'm just as guilty as anyone.

So it's up to me to jazz things up a bit. Because I have the results of a recent survey about ... umm ... err ... sex.

There. Did that get your attention?

One Friday night recently I was watching the regular nightly news broadcast on CBC when the topic sudden switched to sex: the results of a survey recently conducted by Chatelaine, a Canadian women's magazine.

Chatelaine (and its sister French language edition) wanted to know about the sex lives of its readers. So it asked. And 3,911 women answered.

"Each revealed to Chatelaine her honest and candid opinions (we'd expect nothing less)," said the magazine at its website, "though, overall, the women we polled held firm to a fairly conservative notion of sexuality. Only half, for instance, feel they should initiate sex with their partners at least some of the time. And even fewer ever want to dominate those partners in bed."

So what are the findings? Well ...

• "Almost half" say they have sex every week. But 29% say they "can't remember" the last time.
• 53% say they want more sex than they get.
• 70% of married readers think their spouse is the best lover they've ever had.
• 44% were under 18 when they first had intercourse; 91% of married readers had sex before they wed.
• 81% have not had cybersex.
• 22% have had phone sex with their partner; just 5% have had phone sex with a stranger.
• 35% say "emotional availability" to another person constitutes cheating.
• 81% like receiving oral sex--but 33% don't like giving it. (Hmmm!)
• Nearly 10% are curious about open relationships; but only 4% have tried one.
• 5% have tried group sex; 11% have tried bondage; 3% have tried S&M.
• 27% say love is "everything" when it comes to having great sex; 41% say it's not everything "but it's most important."
• 57% of English readers say they have an orgasm most or all the time they have sex; 72% of French readers say they do.
• 1 in 4 routinely fakes an orgasm.
• 28% of readers say they have "sworn off sex" at least once in the past.
• 37% of readers say they have been cheated on.
• 1 in 5 have enjoyed a purely sexual, emotion-free relationship in the past.
• 7 or 8 sex partners in a lifetime is the norm among readers; 77% say they don't mind being honest about that number with others.
• 43% of French Canadian women say they initiate sex about as often as their partners; only 32% of English Canadian women say that.
• 22% of readers never masturbate; another 29% do so less than once a month.
• 38% own a vibrator.
• 31% say they would rather have a root canal than spend a day at a nude beach; the other 69% pick the nude beach.
• 50% say their body image interferes with sex.

A parting thought: It comes from a woman who was interviewed about the survey results in the TV stiry. Told that the survey says 1 in 4 women routinely fakes orgasms, she said, "Well, I think it happens once in a blue moon with any woman, right? ... You don't think so?"

I hope she was talking about faked orgasms in general--not her own personal experience.